Chances are, these will be safe. Because one more crash even remotely related, would spell complete doom for Boeing. No recovering that one, ever.
Boeing's upgraded 737 Max completes first flight with media onboard
61–70 of 290 posts
Re: Boeing's upgraded 737 Max completes first flight with media onboard
#62What did they do to fix it?
Gave the interns a summer project.
Re: Boeing's upgraded 737 Max completes first flight with media onboard
#63I recently had the frivolous idea of creating a flight search engine for flights that DID NOT use the 737 Max. Any actual interest in this?
Planes can be switched out last-minute. I plan to check the plane type at the gate every time I fly for the next 10 years, and if it's a MAX, I'll reschedule my flight on the spot. They claim they solved the software problem, but they didn't solve the physics problems created by the engine position (which necessitated the software in the first place).
> they didn't solve the physics problems created by the engine position
The engine position, in itself, isn't terribly unusual; the 757 and 767 both have engines in similar forward positions on the wings and have a similar pitch up moment due to the engines at high angles of attack. So do a number of Airbus models. Designing flight controls to deal with this issue is not new and has been well tested.
The particular issue with the 737 MAX was that Boeing wanted to change the engine position on an existing aircraft, without requiring a new type certification and pilot retraining. That meant that the flight controls had to not just properly account for the engine position, but to do so while keeping the same stick force curve vs. angle of attack as existing 737 models. That is what drove the MCAS software system that caused all the trouble. If the plane had been designed as a new type from the start, the engine position would not have been an issue; and the redesign is basically doing what a new type design would have done, as far as I can tell from the documents the FAA has published.
Re: Boeing's upgraded 737 Max completes first flight with media onboard
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
The original 737 had some early issues also. Tail rudder problems that resulted in crashes is one that comes to mind. They were fixed and now nobody thinks twice about flying them and their long-term safety record is excellent.
The issue isn't a really a physical one in principle here. It's an issue of corporate accountability. You had corners cut to deliver a product that ended up killing people. There is no real room for doubt in that just from the material we have available. So, what? What happens? What should happen? Everything go back to "normal"? Let the same people who ran things continue to profit off their wrongdoing? Accept that a…
The CEO resigned, so it's questionable whether there are the same people running things. How much other management changed?
Re: Boeing's upgraded 737 Max completes first flight with media onboard
#65Maybe they should have bit the bullet and fully redesigned the 737. Presumably future engines will be bigger still, will they just tack them onto this old design as well? At the end of the day this is just a software fix.
This is a 20 year old question. A new single or small twin isle would cost $10-20B and take 8 years to develop and certify on the optimistic side. Given they're still bleeding on the 787, the 777X may be cancelled, KC-46 fiasco, Airbus competition, they have to go with what they have.
Why is that the consumer’s problem? It’s literally playing with people’s lives just because a company is bad at what they do.
Re: Boeing's upgraded 737 Max completes first flight with media onboard
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
The original 737 had some early issues also. Tail rudder problems that resulted in crashes is one that comes to mind. They were fixed and now nobody thinks twice about flying them and their long-term safety record is excellent.
The issue isn't a really a physical one in principle here. It's an issue of corporate accountability. You had corners cut to deliver a product that ended up killing people. There is no real room for doubt in that just from the material we have available. So, what? What happens? What should happen? Everything go back to "normal"? Let the same people who ran things continue to profit off their wrongdoing? Accept that a…
What alternative would you propose? You can't just remove Boeing as a company: they have tens of thousands of existing aircraft in the field that need to be maintained, and a large number of people who were not at fault in all of this whose jobs would be eliminated. So how do you hold the proper people accountable without doing so much collateral damage that the cost of that outweighs the benefits?
Also, responsibility doesn't just like with Boeing; the FAA certified the 737 MAX, and the rules that allowed that to happen were written by lawmakers and bureaucrats over a period of decades. How do you hold all of them accountable? Many, if not most, of those people aren't even actively working any more.
Re: Boeing's upgraded 737 Max completes first flight with media onboard
#67Maybe they should have bit the bullet and fully redesigned the 737. Presumably future engines will be bigger still, will they just tack them onto this old design as well? At the end of the day this is just a software fix.
> Maybe they should have bit the bullet and fully redesigned the 737. If I were the EU regulator, I would have forced them to... It's a great way to screw over Boeing (American) and boost sales for Airbus (EU), while having the fairly legit rationale that you no longer have confidence in the US regulator due to a long series of blunders, and you are not happy for a major new plane design to use a decades old type rat…
Doing that would mean acting in bad faith (obviously) but also breaking WTO Rules, i.e. international law, which can come with a big price tag if your caught (potentially unlikely in such a scenario and depends on the WTO being accepted by the US, which is also not very likely). That is on top of being sued by Boeing in Court for wrongfully denying the recertification. So I'm not sure whether that would really be a consideration.
Re: Boeing's upgraded 737 Max completes first flight with media onboard
#68Chances are, these will be safe. Because one more crash even remotely related, would spell complete doom for Boeing. No recovering that one, ever.
The DC-10 recovered. It was grounded, returned to service, crashed again. Eventually, it became safe. And eventually the public forgot about the issues.
The bigger problem is that you have a company that decided that a single sensor driving a safety-critical system was sufficient, even though they have two (and even that is not enough, such systems should have three).
For a new system that was introduced and not explained to pilots, because that was the goal. It even made the "AOA disagree" warning _an optional feature_. Or, more specifically, it made the AOA indicator an optional feature, and the AOA disagree feature was tied to that. They knew about it, but didn't inform anyone. Including the FAA.
So now we trust that same company to make the plane safe. Why?
Re: Boeing's upgraded 737 Max completes first flight with media onboard
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
The original 737 had some early issues also. Tail rudder problems that resulted in crashes is one that comes to mind. They were fixed and now nobody thinks twice about flying them and their long-term safety record is excellent.
Tail rudder problems is putting it mildly. There was malfunction with a valve that would cause the rudder to move in the opposite direction of the control inputs.
Correct. Flight 427 to Pittsburgh. My wife’s father was on the flight.
The tail’s controls inverted in freezing temperatures.
Re: Boeing's upgraded 737 Max completes first flight with media onboard
#70In a weird way, having the Max grounded during 2020 turned out to be lucky timing on Boeing's part. The airlines slowdown due to COVID likely gave them some serious breathing room while they got their shit together. Now hopefully they actually did get their shit together.
I think I disagree. If they’d taken the time to scrap the 737 Max and move to a new design, they’d have had the time and the public would have eaten the new product up. Instead, they doubled down and are now going to try to have to sell a product that many will refuse to ever fly on, myself included.
Yes. Taking a 10-15 year timeframe from Boeing publicly signalling intention in 2011 that would mean the new aircraft would have gone to market in early to mid 2020s.
Perhaps no one in sufficient interests in Boeing read Irrational Exuberance [1] which covered in a decent amount of detail about downturns +/- 2 years of every decade, always the same root cause if different symptoms. Or perhaps they did but were 'maximising shareholder value' (with a 3 month window on the share price) and didn't care - "this time it's different" after all.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irrational_Exuberance_(book)